The Important Matter of Value

Before we get started today, let's quickly define convention, just to ensure we're all on the same page.

When I talk about value, I mean something that is worth money. Value is something that someone will pay for. If you provide a person with value, be it a good or a service, you can expect a denomination of dollars in return. If you think you are providing someone something, but they don't want to trade the contents of their purse, then you don't have something of value. I know there is a lot of hype these days about good business being about more than money, blah blah blah. It's bullshit, at least in the beginning. Before you can have a business that is about more than money, it needs to be about money.

That paragraph prior is redundant, but ever so important.

Because without that fiat currency, you won't be able to rent an office, employ a staff, develop a website or market your offering. The world goes around because money makes it spin.

And let me make one thing clear, I have serious beef with people who don't understand, nay, refuse to accept, this concept. Listen here, hippy: You can protest and hunger-strike all you like, but in my eyes, that's the easy way out. Your goals would be much more graspable if you were to just realize the rules that govern our globe. If only you would work your way up the corporate ladder, so that once on top you could make the right, responsible strategic decisions with a real impact. But that would require foresight and determination, not to say that all hippies lack such qualities.

Anyways, back to the lecture at hand, I've talked a little bit about how implementing something of value is crucial to business success. But in penning my last post, I feel I might have skipped a beat. Allow me to backtrack, please. I have come to believe, through brutal experience, that your idea of value, and your target market's idea of value, can be completely different. The question then, becomes how do we efficiently and effectively bridge this rift?

Communicate. More specifically, communicate with your potential customers. Ask strangers in your target market what they are looking for. Ask strangers, objective, critical strangers - the opposite of your mother. It sounds easy, but it takes action. You might be surprised by what you hear. But as long as you can adapt, you'll be fine. Get the hard stuff out of the way early. It's going to be a lot harder when you find out, 6 months and innumerable expenses later at the launch of your first product, that you've got a flop on your hands.

Find out what the needs are of the clients you want to serve. Listen to their answers and follow-up with more questions. Understand why their needs are important to them.

NOTE: I'm sort of just laying the framework, figuring out for the direction of this blog as I go. In doing so I'm applying the principle I'll touch on in my next post.

NOTE II: Once I'm happy with this here foundation I've laid, I'll get more specific and detailed by illustrating my posts with my own personal examples over the course of the last 6 months. Bear with me, for now; it'll be worth it, I promise.